Tamiya 300058618 1:10 RC Monster Beetle 2015

Product Information

The rear universal drive shafts transfer power smoothly and come with rubber boots to protect them from dust. As you can see the car comes in a box with the classic artwork, instantly making me remember staring at them sitting on the shelves of my local hobby shop. Once you take a look inside the fantastic looking VW shell will jump out at you, along with the gold rims and spiked tyres. So after 30 years I was now finally able to build one :)

Also visible above are the rubber boots that house the rear drive shafts. With hard running, this system is a bit of a weakness of this model (and others in the Tamiya range that use it) as the driveshafts have hexagonal ends that can eventually wear down. It’s also funny to think that the rubber boots were held on by plastic ties! But this was the official way to build the kit. And if you don’t run your cars *too* hard, and keep the stressed components like these well lubricated with Molybdenum grease, then they will operate well for many years. I tried to carefully recreate this exact look, when building this model. So I hope it looks pretty close. Following this we attach the steering arms to the servo saver. It is basic and chunky and should be fine to get started with. The incredible 130mm diameter tyres with lug/pin spike tread provides fantastic off-road performance. The tyres are also paired with gold-effect, (one-piece) rims. The rear suspension stays are then mounted alongside the switch holders, these are made of plastic and do have some flex.

This re-release version of the Monster Beetle assembly kit features a number of updates while keeping the basic layout of the original off-road car released in 1986. The Monster Beetle was first released on the 23rd of December, 1986… some 27 years ago, as I write this. You can find it in my showroom here: (There are some more posts for it while making progresses, was my beginning here, and I forgot to make a nice build thread out of it)

The rugged ABS space-frame chassis fromthe original model (58060) has remained. The chassis uses a double-wishbone front with trailing arm rear suspension setups that work in tandum with the CVA oil dampers. Left: Take a closer look at the complex drivetrain, shown here in this profile view of the chassis. Rear skid plate and antenna mount, which necessitated the two bottom screws of the gear box to be a bit longer (30mm vs. 27mm, if I recall correctly)Front double wishbone and rear trailing arm setups are cushioned by high-performance CVA oil dampers. A 3-gear differential is housed between a pair of aluminum plates that make up the transmission case. The original Monster Beetle used hex shaped dogebones for driveshafts and they were prone to rounding out. This time around Tamiya has included a more traditional dogbone with a CV joint on the axles. When fitting the servo you want it to be straight. I found that my servo lug was catching the bottom part of the frame. I just trimmed it a little and then it slotted in perfectly. The kit comes with a classic RS540 motor. You need to fit the plastic motor mount onto it and also ensure that the 10t long boss pinion is attached.